Canon Goddard wrote: "We hope the Archbishop of Canterbury will ... make clear that the recent actions of the Southern Cone in both the USA and Canada are wholly unacceptable to the Communion at large."

I think that Canon Goddard has a very short, or selective memory. ++Rowan, with the rest of the Primates, made clear to TEC and ACC at Dar-E-Salaam that their approval of sinful sexual relationships is completely unacceptable to the Communion. Extra-terratorial action, on the other hand, was said to be regretable but may be justifable..

Posted by: david wh on
Tuesday, 11 December 2007 at 3:27pm GMT

Reply to Mr. Houlding of London: Quote Is one to be persecuted for clinging to the faith once delivered to the saints? Unquote

Sir, only when one's clinging presuppositionally to certain conservative religious views is also preached to require one to steal the money and the property while loudly denouncing historic Anglican leeway for all the Anglican mixed middles, as well as the Anglican lefts.

Stealing things only for yourself, which are otherwise held in trust with others for others, is one offense which cannot pass apostolic muster for very many Anglican believers.

"She knows full well that a small minority of disgruntled Episcopalians, well-financed by wealthy conservatives, were plotting and scheming, long before the election of the current Bishop of New Hampshire, to get The Episcopal Church excluded from the Anglican Communion."

Exactly! And the funding is available precisely because it helps to destabilize TEC, thereby silencing an anti-Bush voice. This is being done to any other church that opposes the Righteous Republican agenda.

Posted by: Ford Elms on
Tuesday, 11 December 2007 at 4:28pm GMT

"We hope the Archbishop of Canterbury will take at least as firm a line as the Presiding Bishop is doing, in responding to the request of the Canadian church. He should make clear that the recent actions of the Southern Cone in both the USA and Canada are wholly unacceptable to the Communion at large."

Good for Canon Giles Goddard. A voice of reason at a time when people shoot from their hips. Still, he may be too optimistic about Rowan Cantuar.

Posted by: John Henry on
Tuesday, 11 December 2007 at 5:49pm GMT

HELP (again)

++KJS and +++ABC

Please send spiritual "recovery teams" into the Diocese of San Joaquin THIS WEEK (and soon in Pittsburgh, Ft.Worth, Quincy)...send them to Deanerys to reassure Episcopalians/Anglicans face-to-face they are loved, needed, wanted and WE welcome and include EVERYONE at the Body of Christ...send representatives from the Anglican Consultive Council, Lambeth, Primates and beyond!

This is a case of "disaster relief" for Episcopalians/Anglican Communion (use the same funds to rent buses, house participants and run newspaper/print ads that we use for other natural disasters).

Help STABALIZE this insanity and the harm it has casued tens of thousands of Christians by bringing hope and faith DIRECTLY to the PEOPLE and quit worrying about your Lambeth Conference outcomes/attendees (they will take care of themselves)!

Well, here's one more item for all to ponder. From a separatist blog comes the following e-mail statement, circulating to all members of the Network in the USA. It marks the moment of final separation as December 18th.

I suppose ++Rowan will just have to delay his Advent letter again, eh?

--quote--

Dear Network,

The next major milestone in the development of Common Cause is next week, when the Common Cause Leadership Council gathers in Orlando, Florida on December 18 for its inaugural meeting. The Council comprises the head bishop, a clergy representative, and a lay representative from each Partner. This body represents Common Cause in all its fullness, and has the authority to do the work of the Partnership.

This is the organizing meeting of Common Cause, at which the assembly will elect its first officers and establish its initial committees and task forces. As such, December 18, 2007 will mark the formal beginning of a "separate ecclesiastical structure" in North America. Following this meeting, Common Cause will be in a place to seek official recognition from the Primates of our Communion.

We at the Network are pleased to have been given the Kingdom assignment of building unity among the Common Cause Partners. Thank you for sharing with us in this task, and please pray for our work next week.

I tell you conservative Anglican realignment is all Daffy Duck good fun, a plot fine as to make Walt Disney himself more than proud of apostolic cartoon sketching traditions - so do read over the draft covenant over at Fr. Tobias' blog.

Have you heard the latest Sydney diocese has congratulated San Joaquin for preserving the Faith once delivered to the Saints.

Does that include the Holy Communion service interpolated as the Mass in Many San Joaquim parishes, and prayers for the dead...excluded from liturgy in Sydney diocese. Sydney refused the Australian Prayer Book because of its liturgical innovations , which are modest by the standards of San Joaquin.

Nice one Sydney...you praise San Joaquim...yet some one with the Anglo-catholic theology of Schofield would not even be made an assistant bishop in Sydney.

Could you imagine St Andrews Cathedral, Sydney having a tabernacle like the Cathedral in San Joaquim...let alone incense, chasuables, mitred bishops, statues and prayers for the dead.

Can I also ask ..will Schofield congratulate Sydney when Jensen ( after Lambeth) signs Lay presidency into action.

What duplicity...and all in the name of the Bible.

Posted by: Robert Ian Williams on
Tuesday, 11 December 2007 at 11:53pm GMT

DrDanFee, the best commentary Tobias Haller has provided is the one where he points out that Rowan Williams's occasional words cause people to hang on to his every utterance for clues, and the slightest wink or nod. Thus, in seeking not to attract too much attention, he gets people eyeballing him all the time for the slightest clue. This must be what has happened.

It is time liberal Anglicans realised that Catholics and Evangelicals are working together because we want to preserve the faith of the universal church. The Catholic wing stopped worrying about chasubles along time ago, we know that the basis of our faith is JESUS CHRIST and not a sociological substitute.
Also I see no difference between and a woman priest and a a lay president at the mass. Neither is ordained and neither can effect the sacrament! Both are equally invalid!

Posted by: Mark Wharton on
Wednesday, 12 December 2007 at 10:09am GMT

"It is time liberal Anglicans realised that Catholics and Evangelicals are working together because we want to preserve the faith of the universal church."

And here I was thinking that's what we all do.
You do mean faith, don't you, not a particular set of beliefs within that universal faith?

Posted by: Erika Baker on
Wednesday, 12 December 2007 at 10:44am GMT

"we know that the basis of our faith is JESUS CHRIST and not a sociological substitute."

Would you care to indicate what you consider is the basis for MY faith? You barely know me, you have little idea what I believe, yet, in typical Rightist fashion, you imply I do not believe in Christ. Odd, since I receive His Body and Blood every Sunday, and go to a parish where, even now, a woman deacon can cause consternation. Odd that the first prayer on a Sunday begins "Almighty God,...." and ends with "...through Jesus Christ our Lord"." Indeed, pretty much every prayer we say at my faithless parish includes some statement that we are praying through Jesus. We read, every Sunday, from a book that tells the story of someone called Jesus. We receive "The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven" and "the Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation". So, I'm curious, on whom do you claim my faith is based?

Posted by: Ford Elms on
Wednesday, 12 December 2007 at 1:12pm GMT

If you take the Bible seriously , " two cannot walk together lest they be agreed. " Both evangelical and Anglo-Catholic interpretations are contradictory.

St Paul is very strong worded on having nothing to do with those who preach another gospel.

One sides preaches that Holy Communion is a memorial meal on a table...the other that it is the propitiatory sacrifice for the living and dead.

One worships the consecrated host as God, the other throws the bread crumbs in the bin.

One preaches that you become a Christian through bapstism, the other by accepting Jesus into your heart.

One prays for the Holy Souls , one believes that prayer for the dead is useless.

These are major disagreements, and yet they are overlooked to fulfill an agenda against women bishops and gays.

This is deliberate blind eye theology.

This is double standard theology.

Its a form of a lie, and liars are also to be excluded from the kingdom of Heaven.

I repaeat Sydney congratualtes Schofield..will Schofield congratulate Jensen when Lay presidency is signed into law!

What incredible self-deception.

Posted by: Robert Ian Williams on
Wednesday, 12 December 2007 at 1:26pm GMT

Surely I'm not the only person here who is sick unto death with the outrageous accusation that "liberal" Anglicans do not have faith in JESUS CHRIST. I have found no sociological substitute to the Triune God whom I worship and adore with my every breath.

Shame on you sir!

Posted by: Davis d'Ambly on
Wednesday, 12 December 2007 at 3:09pm GMT

Thanks MWH for confirming what we all so frequently suspect - that this is about preserving things traditional. And of course that must include the innate high privileges to indulge in ethical or religious trash talk (via flat out false witness and often via half-truths highlighted and driven by rumor or stereotypes) - and occasionally under certain church life or cultural circumstances - actually mistreat - queer folks. Such bad people simply cannot under any circumstances for any reason be allowed to investigate, study, and come to any alternative point of view. Let alone base that view on anything acceptable in our best practices modern tool kits of inquiry and discernment. That cat is out of the traditional bag.

The loss of these traditional ethical and religious privileges must be very great, indeed.

Yet those of us who have surrendered them to this or that extent must still bear true witness - we didn't need them that much, after all. Not in order to faithfully follow Jesus of Nazareth, nor to be ethical in daily life, nor to be thankful in common prayer as Anglicans.

Posted by: drdanfee on
Wednesday, 12 December 2007 at 4:10pm GMT

If a priest must 'be like' Jesus in gender, how about in the ability to speak Hebrew and Aramaic and [likely] Greek and to [probably] get along in Latin [the centurion]. How about being Jewish? How about being an itinerent teacher with no fixed home, no steady source of income ...

Sounds like for some folks you don't really have to BE like Jesus, you just have to ... like Jesus. well I won't be vulgar. You can figure out what rhymes.

Mark Wh: if you don't think that a woman can be validly ordained then you have already parted company with the Anglican Church, except in certain parts of the world (now, I wonder where they could be...?). Perhaps Roman Catholicism would be a more honest option for you.

Posted by: Fr Mark on
Wednesday, 12 December 2007 at 5:05pm GMT

"Surely I'm not the only person here who is sick unto death with the outrageous accusation that "liberal" Anglicans do not have faith in JESUS CHRIST."

No, Davis, you're not.

Of course, in order to justify their hatred, they need to lie about us.

It is the way of haters. They lie about those they want to hate. They claim that "liberals" don't believe in Jesus. They claim that homosexuals are all child molesters. They claim that Jews kidnap gentile children and kill them.

Yes, yes, yes, I grant that theswe are things at three different scales of dishonezsty. But the difference between the "unbelief" libel, the "molester" libel and the "blood" libel is about the degree of dishonesty involved. But the difference is in degree, not type.

"Neither is ordained and neither can effect the sacrament! Both are equally invalid!"

And that, Mark Wh, is exactly THE POINT: Conservative (nay, Reactionary) Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics (nay, Anglo-neo-Papists) BOTH consider each other "not ordained" and "equally invalid".

Their marriage (for the sake of bashing the queers/queer-lovers) is the very *definition* of "...made in hell."

Posted by: JCF on
Wednesday, 12 December 2007 at 7:37pm GMT

Malcolm+ wrote: "They claim that "liberals" don't believe in Jesus."

I would certainly say that most liberal posters here seem to have an approach to their Christianity that is uncannily like that prevalent in western society at the moment (ie postmodern) - picking and choosing bits and using them as decoration on their id-centred philosophical framework.

Posted by: david wh on
Thursday, 13 December 2007 at 12:17am GMT

David Wh: I don't think it's at all strange that the "liberals" have a mindset uncannily similar to that of the rest of society at the moment. What is stranger is that the "conservatives" are stuck in the mindset and moral assumptions of the 1950s - every bit as much a societal construct, just one that is now old-fashioned and out-dated, and not an appropriate basis for speaking to western European society in 2007.

Posted by: Fr Mark on
Thursday, 13 December 2007 at 11:27am GMT

david wh: "picking and choosing bits"

For pity's sake this is dull. Usury! Remarriage after divorce! Is that not "picking and choosing bits" too?

People / the Church have reinterpreted scripture since Adam was a boy.

Fr Mark, 'conservatives' are stuck in the mindset and moral assumptions of Christ and the apostles - that was pretty unpopular then, and in the 1950s too - just for different reasons!

Posted by: david wh on
Thursday, 13 December 2007 at 12:46pm GMT

"If a priest must 'be like' Jesus in gender"

There is an argument that what is important in the Incarnation is that God takes on our humanity, not specifically maleness. In that instance, to claim that only a man can be a priest because only a man can act 'in persona Christi' seems to suggest that it is His maleness that is important specifically. On the premise that what is not assumed is not redeemed, this 'in persona christi' argument suggests that women are not redeemed because God in Christ only assumed male humanity. Dodgy, that.

"What is stranger is that the "conservatives" are stuck in the mindset and moral assumptions of the 1950s"

Not all that strange, it is the basis of conservatism: what was is better than what is, or at least ought to be abandoned only after sober thought. The problem is that there is never enough sober thought. Look how this is manifest. They commonly see modern society as being in a state of moral decline, yet the obvious moral failings of bygone eras are ignored. They see huge increases in crime that are simply not there. They see huge increases in unwed mothers and abortions, ignore anything that suggests these things are NOT as a result of the things they abhor, like sex ed in schools, and on and on. This is part of why they don't listen to gay people at all, yet claim to have done so. To look our humanity in the face is to question some of their basic assumptions of how the world wags. They accuse Western Liberals of thinking of themselves as prophetic and boldly leading into new uncharted territory in the mistaken belief that they are being led by God. They may be right, but is their perception of the imminent downfall of the West and their status as persecuted martyrs for the Truth any less of a delusion?

Posted by: Ford Elms on
Thursday, 13 December 2007 at 2:13pm GMT

"Fr Mark, 'conservatives' are stuck in the mindset and moral assumptions of Christ and the apostles"

You might be able to make yourself believe that, but it's pretty obvious to everyone else that this isn't the case. The Emperor has no clothes.

Posted by: Ford Elms on
Thursday, 13 December 2007 at 5:17pm GMT

David Wh: No, you are not stuck in the mindset of the time of the Apostles. I don't know how well-informed you are about it, but it certainly didn't resemble contemporary Evangelicalism.

Posted by: Fr Mark on
Thursday, 13 December 2007 at 5:58pm GMT

>>>"Fr Mark, 'conservatives' are stuck in the mindset and moral assumptions of Christ and the apostles"

Ward Cleaver and Ozzie Nelson were apostles? Fascinating!

Posted by: JPM on
Thursday, 13 December 2007 at 8:16pm GMT

D Wh: "liberal posters here seem to have an approach to their Christianity that is uncannily like that prevalent in western society at the moment (ie postmodern) - picking and choosing bits and using them as decoration on their id-centred philosophical framework"

The pot doth lecture the kettle on its blackness.

"conservatives" seem to have an approach to their Christianity that is uncannily like that prevalent in western society at the moment (ie postmodern) - picking and choosing bits and using them as decoration on their id-centred philosophical framework.

As others have pointed out, the "conservatives" are hypocrites on usury, divorce. Thing is, they like collecting interest and they like to be able to go from marriage to marriage. It's just fags they hate.

There have been a number of comments about sex and the priesthood (sex as in being male or female). The questions being debated on this thread are largely ones about the rationality of it all, a philosophical sort of approach. My own concern would be entirely about Tradition, following St. Vincent's rule of "what has been believed everywhere, always and by all". I've found that one to be difficult to get past, at least for me. If someone has a good way of cutting through this, I'd love to hear it; I have no reason to disbelieve in ordaining women if the Christian faith does not compel me.

The thing is, even if it makes rational sense to ordain women, even if any argument about the male character of the priesthood ends up sounding ridiculous (I'm not saying it is), and even if the best evidence is put forward against a conservative interpretation of New Testament references to women, and even if there is abundant proof that women were ordained in some parts of the Early Church (even as bishops!)...

There is still no continuing tradition. One cannot say that the universal church has believed in the ordination of women, from the beginning - that it has been believed by the mass of Christians in all times and places. Actually, very much the opposite is true. For whatever biblical, theological or philosophical reason, the bulk of Christians throughout time and space have believed that priests are to be men.

I do not, personally or on the basis of any other authority, have the ability to override that.

If there developed, in times to come, a universal consensus among the churches - both Eastern and Western - that women should be ordained, and that there was nothing in the tradition that actually forbade this, and came up with a convincing way of reconciling the innovation with the Tradition, then maybe... but even then, it's a tough call. Without that, there's nothing for it but to hold to the Faith as we have received it.

You do know this is a lie? And that when he wrote his Commonitorium pro catholicae fidei antiquitate & universitate Saint Vincent des Lérins was out to promote his teacher’s Johannes Cassianus’ novel semi-pelagianism? Which he wanted to place above Scripture, Church and Tradition?

In the Pastoral letters the same phrase is found : “as in all the other Congregations of the Saints”.

So every time someone comes up with something brand new, every time someone wants to change Scripture, Church and Tradition, they come up with this.

Wee now you know.

Actually, Polygamy is the point where the Church has been anything like consistent. Up to Leo I, Bishop of Rome around 450. But even Frederick VII of Denmark had a Spouse (the Queen ) and a Wife (Countess Danner) simultaneously. And there are still vestiges of Polygamy: secondary marriages (morgengabicum) in German Princely Hausgetz. The late Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was a child born of a marriage morgengabicum, that is lacking the rights to inherit.

MDT
this post was a joke, wasn't it.
Please explain how ANY tradition can ever develop if you don't EVER allow its beginning.
And please explain, precisely, how you live a life exactly mirroring 1st century Christianity.

Posted by: Erika Baker on
Wednesday, 19 December 2007 at 8:53am GMT

"what has been believed everywhere, always and by all".

By which definition, the "Catholic Faith" has never existed. And, as to adhering to what we have received, when did we ever do that? I mean, the Church most certainly has developed in the past 2000 years. I doubt Paul would recognize much, he might even be a bit peeved over what he saw. This argument is bad enough coming from Anglo-catholics who ought to have enough knowledge of Church history to know how things have changed. It is even worse coming from Evangelicals, whose beliefs and practices represent a far more radical break with Tradition than anything currently being proposed.

Posted by: Ford Elms on
Wednesday, 19 December 2007 at 2:11pm GMT

"For whatever biblical, theological or philosophical reason, the bulk of Christians throughout time and space have believed that priests are to be men."

I would rather suggest that because of their Social structures they haven't given it a thought.

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